Money up front. Promise it will be shipped within 1 - 5000 days from now. Thanks.

But in all seriousness, I don’t have an issue with devs getting funding or making profit. Hard work and dedication should be rewarded. Let’s just remember that without a community and only Devs then this is nothing. As @ELDAD has pointed out there needs to be tighter reins on the DAO and only payment after meeting deadlines. Prices should also be considered at fair market value.

@inccry the proposals are not overfunded in fiat value, but in relation of PRV circulation.

Currently about 8 million PRV is in circulation and 40,000 means 0,5% of all. In comparison Vitalik Buterin owns a similar percentage in Ethereum and he worked years for that.

I 100% agree higher salaries make a project better in general.

But I don’t think raising rates would do anything good here. The PRV price increase should compensate builders imo.

@duy a fair & transprent distribution of coins is the heart of all successful crypto project, people will not buy PRV at a higher price if they feel a small group distributed it between themselves at an early stage, even if the product is super good.

The core team already had guaranteed spots on the validator list each epoch

That would be frustrating, so I appreciate where you’re coming from, but that’s not how it works.

If I run a node, I don’t get any preference over any other user. The “core team nodes” are a fixed number of already-running nodes that serve to secure the network and fund all proposals (not just core team), pay for marketing and upkeep, and a lot more. It’s not like it’s PRV in my pocket. Hope that clarifies it a bit.

As for the overfunding in general, I think it’s a case of misunderstanding. Team members write proposals to show what they’ll work on each month, which must be approved by a vote. If approved, funding is paid out when results are delivered. Also, the most of the funding doesn’t pay a person, but project costs. PRV rewards of 500-2000 (I’m generalizing, it obviously depends on the proposal) are paid to the person working on it. If a proposal says something like 13000 PRV, it’s because there’s multiple people working on it, and high costs that need to be paid (not to the team) for things like materials, advertising, or something else (again, all project specific of course).

Edit:
I just want to be absolutely clear, payout is not guaranteed, it’s dependent upon results being met. That’s why we stress that every proposal has a deliverables and timeline section (and as of recently, a “key results” section), to measure whether payout was earned.

Fixed committee setup

Note that for Mainnet v.0, 22 out of 32 validators are operated by the core team. These 22 validators are fixed and are not substitutable; only the other 10 validator slots are substitutable.

So what you’re telling me is that I don’t know how to read or this has changed but never updated in this article? Also, If my memory serves correctly I read on here that the original date of reducing fixed core validators was actually extended out another year.

Not only that but in the same article, it states the core team purchased 5,000,000 PRV at the initial cost of 1,000,000. At the current market rate that would hold the value of $3,635,000 USD.

My other comment explains the funding, but there’s more in this discussion so I think I can sum it up this way:

The project is an iceberg, and incognito is the tip. There’s so much being done that even I am not aware of, just for the sheer speed and volume of work. Listing proposals on the site while the funding is still determined by core team votes is our effort to be transparent and include everyone as much as possible. But we’re still getting there. Proposals from the core team may overlap, since we work together on so many different projects, but it doesn’t mean funds are paid twice for the same project. It’s more of a way for each individual team member to communicate here what they’re working on.

I’m glad we have this thread, because it shows how we can do better to explain, and I want people to continue asking about what they don’t understand. There will always be more, and we’ll always keep working at it. For now it wouldn’t work, but eventually, proposal funding will be decentralized.

Fairness, transparency, and privacy are the main goals for the core team and the community, and soon, there will be no distinction between the two groups. As we work toward that, ask any/all questions that come up, that’s the point. But with the community focused on fairness and representation, and the core team focused on iterating and meeting preset goals, it can feel like there’s a bigger divide than there is. No one means to be defensive, it’s just that there are a lot of sacrifices being made and work being done by people who care about privacy more than money. So you can know we’re all working toward the same thing, but still keep asking us to prove it.

As for @jared, no, I don’t mean to say you can’t read, I apologize if that’s how the comment came across. Here’s how it works:

Fixed Nodes

Fixed node slots are filled. I cannot set my node up somehow as a team member and have it constantly earn. None of us can. These nodes are there to ensure network security and fund the development of the project. @Andrey’s comment helps clarify:

PRV from fixed nodes are used to fund development projects from the core team as well as the community (see the DAO category on the site), fund initiatives (like pDEX mining or community rewards), pay server costs to run these fixed nodes, marketing and partnership activities, etc.

So the PRV from fixed nodes doesn’t line our pockets, it pays your liquidity rewards and funds proposals by anyone, including us, if results are delivered.

5 million PRV prepurchased

This PRV is locked and released as block rewards over 5 years. That PRV was purchased at $0.20/PRV, which is more than what the price of PRV was listed at initially, so it wasn’t purchased at some discount. In addition, the reason it was purchased was to fund the project so that we don’t have to sell out to venture capital or do an ICO. So that was done for users, so we can have a decentralized project. It was paid by the founding team (not me) from their own pockets, only to become locked PRV.

I hope that helps. With so many facets to Incognito, it can seem confusing. But in reality, everything is done for the project, and the community does have a say. That’s the point of the discourse. So thanks for asking questions, and please do keep it up.

The proposals are there to be as transparent as possible about what is being worked on. Funds are paid per month, but weekly checked whether set goals were met, updates are present.

Quality is a thing at Incognito. Teams are pushed weekly to up their game in writing and updating their proposals. But also this is new to the different teams, they need to get the hang of expressing what they do, how it will be done, what they are aiming for, and when it will be done.

You are more than welcome to comment on the proposals. When one is published just mention your concerns about the funding, about the time span. When one is updated, comment again. That is actually what these are for.

Some team members are in multiple teams, which makes them show up more than once. Some proposals go from team(member) to team(member) when they enter a different state.

For example, the redesign of an app aspect

drawing board

writing/testing code

rolling it out on testnet

creating a design in the app

rolling it out on mainnet

supply support

As Aaron already said, it is not just for team members, everyone can write a proposal for a project they would like to start and get funded once approved.

Maybe this is the right place to remind the community, the project is about adding privacy mode to crypto transactions, storage, trades, and so on. Everything else is there to facilitate that.

The project is aiming for longterm results. We are looking forward to build this network with people who value privacy and see future in the system. We’d love to brainstorm about use cases.

PRV is a utility coin, if the value increases, that is great, but that is not the aim of the project. It is a nice side-effect.

Those who join for a quick win just picked the wrong project. This project wasn’t started to make people instantly rich, or provide a basic income. If that is a longterm result, again that is great, but for now, we want to provide privacy mode to cryptocurrency, all cryptocurrency, and we hope you will join us in achieving that.

Just a point that may have been discussed.
I would assume one pnode being created, etc. would be at a lower price amount than multiple new-ish nodes being stacked together.
One pnode equals “x” amount.
Multiple nodes being sold as one equals a higher “x” amount to create then sell. If I’m tracking it all correctly?
(They may also have a larger team to pay now than before?)

@ELDAD I think that’s a case of poor communication rather than multiple proposals. No one is getting funded twice for the same job. One of my jobs is to edit things like that, so it’s honestly my fault if it comes across as the same proposal. I apologize.

Ultimately, the first proposal is the coding/development of those features. The second (Henry’s) is for the marketing of the features and getting new users because of those features, but he decided to include Duc’s proposal to try to gather it all into one. The third proposal has nothing to do with pKyber except that it’s one aspect of the many upgrades to the pDEX. Andrey’s proposal is about increasing trading volume by focusing on the pDEX’s strengths.

So they’re all different goals, single instances of funding, and different people, but they reference each other.

As for Duy, I can’t speak for him, but personally I don’t think he meant to be rude. He knows how hard everyone is working, and I believe he was making a statement in defense of the people working on the project, not being malicious. It’s fairly easy to be misinterpreted over the internet. I think it’s safe to say discussion and project betterment is what we’re all here for.

All good questions. Given that it’s a privacy project, I think sharing the payment details would defeat the purpose. But for the rest, this post explains the answers to all of your questions How we work